


Demoralization

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [24]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 10:13:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14399994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: I can meet you by the room?Jared texts.i dont think thats a good idea, Bryce texts back, and Jared’s stomach drops.





	Demoralization

It’s probably a good thing Bryce seems to be glued to his phone 24/7, because that’s about the only way they’re really communicating once the season really gets underway.

Jared kind of hates text speak, definitely doesn’t do it himself, but he leaps toward his phone every time to grin at Bryce’s ridiculous, misspelled texts, as riddled with typos as emojis. Chaz quit calling him on his lack of chill early, though he snorts audibly when Jared texts his way through team dinner, not being as careful to shield his phone as he should, so Chaz gets a glance at some of a…not so innocent exchange. Thankfully Bryce is in Jared’s phone as BJ, or that would probably be worse. 

“That his name or his job?” Chaz asks, and laughs when Jared goes scarlet and decides from now on he’s got to be more careful. Chaz may have read the most embarrassing thing possible, but if he’d read something Jared had sent after the Flames game it would have been — bad. Chaz seems chill, but Jared doesn’t know him well enough to trust him with the fact he’s dating a freaking _Flame_.

So basically they’re reduced to texts. That and, after Jared gets home, a Skype call after a game, when Bryce’s road roommate is apparently at some girl’s place hooking up and way after Jared should be in bed. He doesn’t have a lock on his door, so he ends up leaning against it, barricading it with his body, watching Bryce’s hand and wishing it was his. It’s a little blurry, not quite satisfactory, though that doesn’t keep his hand off his own dick, speeding up when Bryce’s does.

*

Jared officially hates the dude scheduling the Flames season. And the dude scheduling the Hitmen season. They probably colluded. Like, to make sure the games didn’t overlap. Because of course they shouldn’t.

Look, Jared knows it’s not rational, but he hates them, because he hasn’t seen Bryce in _forever_. Not even for like, an hour, or whatever they can cram in, because the second Jared got home from Prince George the Flames skipped off to Edmonton and Winnipeg. Skype sex isn’t bad — it’s better than Jared’s hand, and seeing Bryce, shitty webcam or not, is better than getting off to memories of him, but it’s not fair. They spent basically every single day together for over a month, and now they can’t even see each other face to face despite the fact that Bryce lives twenty minutes away from him. It’s ridiculous.

Thankfully the first Flames home game of the season works out to be on a Saturday night, right before a Sunday game for the Hitmen, because Jared’s leaving town again on Monday. Bonus in that that Bryce texts him that there are four tickets to the Flames home opener waiting at the box office. It’s basically the highlight of Jared’s week. Like, because tickets to a Flames game, duh, but also because that means Jared can actually _see_ him. 

And maybe that’s going to be for like, ten minutes — he’d love it if his parents waived curfew, but that’s really not likely considering he’s got a game the next day — but as slim as ten minutes sounds, actually seeing Bryce face to face, touching him, even if that’s a too loose hug or a glancing brush of hands — Jared really needs that. He misses his boyfriend.

It’s no issue convincing his parents to come. Jared thought his dad might hold out, considering he won’t even cheer Bryce’s goals, but apparently refusing Flames tickets is a bridge too far. Erin’s a little harder, not that Jared cares whether she comes or not — he only cares about his parents coming because he knows they won’t be on him about the game being past curfew if they’re with him — so whatever convincing is done is all on his parents’ part.

The seats Bryce got from Bob — Jared _loves_ Bob — are awesome, second level, centre ice. Anything closer and they’d be craning their heads, checking the Jumbotron whenever a play happens down the ice, but here they can see absolutely everything, the closest to the clarity of a TV view as possible. Though obviously way better, because it’s live, the Saddledome packed, noisy, a sea of red surrounding them.

Bryce doesn’t score, but he gets an assist on a Casterley goal in the second, and his dad doesn’t even bother to grunt when the PA announces it, cheers along with the rest of the crowd. The lead stretches to three by the third, and Jared splits his attention between the game and watching Bryce on the bench, looking serious, determined, leaning forward, eyes probably darting to follow the play. He’s devastating, and Jared loves him a stupid amount, especially like this.

The second the final buzzer goes Jared starts mentally calculating how long it’d take to get back to the room, listen to the postgame speech, deal with the press, dragging his feet as he follows his family out. His parents are oddly patient about waiting around in the vestibule, make no move to leave, so they clearly know Jared’s angling to meet up with Bryce, his dad flipping through the program, murmuring something to his mom, Erin’s nose in her phone when Jared pulls his own out.

 _I can meet you by the room?_ Jared texts. Steve’s on security tonight, and he knows Jared pretty well, waved back when Jared waved on his way in, so he’s almost positive he’d let him through. And if he didn’t, a call from Bryce would fix that pretty quick.

 _i dont think thats a good idea_ , Bryce texts back, and Jared’s stomach drops.

 _I won’t see you tonight then_ , Jared texts.

 _sux_ , Bryce texts back, which is just — he hasn’t seen Bryce in over a fucking week, and now Bryce doesn’t even seem to care.

 _Can I see you tomorrow before my game?_ Jared asks. _I can come to yours tomorrow before pregame_

_I have a team bbq thing sry :( i can cum to ur game tho_

_Is the BBQ a team only thing?_ Jared texts back. He’s fully aware he looks desperate right now, but he’s apparently incapable of not pressing.

_no but its like gfs and family_

So Jared isn’t invited. Of course.

 _Whatever_ , he texts. _I’ll see you whenever you miraculously have time then._

 _ill cum to ur game!_ Bryce texts, like catching ten minutes with him before he has to get home means shit. Like, yeah, Jared was hoping for that tonight, but it feels fucking hollow now.

 _Don’t bother_ , Jared texts, shoving his phone in his back pocket and ignoring it buzzing insistently with whatever Bryce’s bullshit response is.

“Are you okay?” his mom asks.

“Fine,” Jared mumbles. “Let’s go.”

“We can go on ahead to the car if you want to say—” she starts.

“It’s fine,” Jared says. “Let’s just go, okay?”

“Nice of Marcus to give us these tickets,” his dad says once they get in the car, his voice careful, like he’s trying to play nice or something. “Good tickets too.”

“Yeah,” Jared says. “He’s a great guy, that Marcus.”

“Whoa,” his dad says, and Jared can practically feel his parents exchanging looks right now.

“Did something happen?” his mom asks.

“No,” Jared says, “Can we stop talking about this now?” 

Even Erin doesn’t bug him during the ride home, and Jared should be grateful for that, but he’s busy fuming. No one stops him when he heads straight to his room after they get home, throwing his phone to skitter across his desk and getting into bed still wearing his Flames jersey, pulling the covers over his head.

*

He sleeps like shit. Every time he gets close he gets caught on the fact that Bryce doesn’t give a shit if he sees him, that Jared’s good enough to text constantly and jerk off with on Skype, but not actually see face to face, and he’s wide awake again, furious.

He must fall asleep eventually, because he wakes up sweating in the middle of the night, shucks his jersey and kicks off his jeans, almost asleep again before he remembers his boyfriend’s a fucking asshole, and then sleep’s impossible.

He mainlines coffee in the morning, ignoring his mom’s look, because if he doesn’t drink it he’s not going to be conscious for the game. He’s not letting Bryce fucking Marcus fuck with his hockey, especially because his dad kept saying he would. It’s not happening.

He grabs his phone when he heads out, but he refuses to look at it for more time than it takes to close the notification he’s got missed texts. A missed call too, at midnight, which has him glad his phone’s muted, because he’s pretty sure if he picked up that call he would have said shit he shouldn’t. Still wants to say shit he shouldn’t, not if he wants to have a boyfriend tomorrow. 

And he does. He thinks he does, at least. It’s pretty hard to judge right now when he can’t even think about Bryce without appending ‘stupid’ or ‘fucking’ or both to his name. Like, it’s not that he doesn’t care about him. Cares too much, probably. Cares more than (stupid) Bryce (fucking) Marcus does, obviously.

Jared plays an awesome fucking game. A stupid fucking game too, gets sent to the box twice for plays he wouldn’t usually make, but neither of those power plays come to anything, and Jared gets two assists, one on a goal from Chaz, one that would have been his goal if Logan hadn’t gotten a stick on it, and Coach doesn’t even give him a hard time for the penalties at the end of it, tells him he likes the edge.

So. There. Bryce isn’t a distraction. Bryce isn’t — it’s whatever. 

Jared’s cooled off a little, got some of the aggression out of his system, maybe, feels like he’s running on fumes more than anything, after a shit night of sleep and the inevitable crash from more caffeine than he’s used to. He checks his phone without really thinking about it after his shower, sees a new text notification from Bryce, telling him to meet up by the garage, and apparently, no, he hasn’t got anything out of his system, because he’s furious all over again.

He’s not going to meet him. If Bryce is too busy to see Jared then Jared’s too busy to see Bryce, and Bryce will have to wait until Jared gets back from Red Deer. Jared’s going to go home, and he’s going to eat the ice cream that’s supposed to be his mom’s, and Bryce can fucking deal with it.

Except it’s kind of hard to avoid your stupid asshole boyfriend when he isn’t where he says he’s going to be, has, in fact, parked himself right off the hallway to the locker room. Jared nearly leaps out of his skin when Bryce’s hand settles around his wrist, pulls him into an alcove, Jared’s knee almost slamming into a stationary bike only the Flames are allowed to use.

“Hey,” Bryce says.

“What’re you doing here,” Jared says.

“The security dude let me through,” Bryce says, like that’s an answer.

“His name’s Steve,” Jared says. “And I told you not to bother, so.”

“Okay, but I wanted to see you,” Bryce says. “And you weren’t answering my texts.”

“Uh,” Jared says. “I was kind of not answering them for a reason, since you made it pretty obvious you didn’t want to see me.”

Bryce frowns. “Dude,” he says. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“For like, ten minutes,” Jared says. “Great, thanks.”

“Why are you mad at me about this?” Bryce says. “Like, you know my schedule’s crazy. _Your_ schedule’s crazy.”

“Except when you could fit me in, you didn’t,” Jared says. “So that kind of seems like a choice, Bryce.”

“I can’t just skip team shit,” Bryce says. “Management kind of — I can’t skip team shit.”

“I didn’t ask you to skip it,” Jared says. 

“You kind of did,” Bryce says.

“No,” Jared says. “I kind of implied you should invite me.”

“I told you it was like families,” Bryce says.

“And girlfriends,” Jared says. 

“What do you want from me here?” Bryce says. “Because you know I wasn’t gonna say—” 

He cuts himself off, leans out to check the hall’s empty, like he doesn’t know how hockey players are. You’d hear any of them coming a mile away. 

“You could have just said I was a buddy,” Jared says.

“Because they wouldn’t think that it was weird for me to invite a buddy?” Bryce says. 

“Right,” Jared says. “So you can’t even introduce me to your teammates as a buddy, but you can totally come to my games and hang around, that’s totally not weird or something people will notice. Super fucking stealth, Marcus.”

“It’s not weird to go to a couple WHL games,” Bryce says. “It’s kind of different when you’re like ‘hey, guys, here’s a random teenager I’m friends with, I brought him along if that’s okay’. They’d think—”

“Oh awesome,” Jared snaps. “I’ve been demoted from your boyfriend to ‘random teenager’.”

“Can we talk about this somewhere else?” Bryce says, and Jared’s practically shaking, he’s so mad, but he’s not mad enough not to realise it’s pure fucking luck none of his teammates have headed this way, so he follows Bryce to a hallway he didn’t even know existed. Must be another Flames only thing. The Hitmen may play in the Saddledome, but it’s obviously not theirs.

“Look, you know that’s not what I meant,” Bryce says. “Obviously you’re not a random teenager to me. I’m just saying that’s how it’s going to seem to the guys.”

“Because you can totally date a ‘random teenager’,” Jared says. “But god fucking forbid someone _sees_ you with him, even as a friend.”

“It’s not like that!” Bryce says. “I go out with you all the time, don’t I? Like, we go to movies and stuff. I don’t know why you’re being so weird about this.”

“And I don’t know if you’re actually stupid enough to think that’s the same thing, or you’re just being disingenuous,” Jared says, because there’s a big fucking difference between a deniable outing around strangers who’d just assume — whatever, not that they were boyfriends, Jared’s sure, because they barely even touch in public — and making the time for him even if he’s got team shit. Jared would. Not that Bryce would come, but Jared would.

“I don’t know what that means,” Bryce says, then, “Don’t call me stupid,” and Jared laughs.

“I don’t know what words mean, but I’m not stupid,” Jared says. “Okay, Bryce.”

Bryce blows out a breath. “Look, I’m here,” he says. “That’s got to count for something.”

“Not really,” Jared says. “My dad’s waiting.”

He’s not, actually, he’s working, but Jared can’t fucking deal with Bryce right now.

“Jared, come on,” Bryce says. “You’re making a huge deal out of nothing right now.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Jared says. He can’t head to the garage, because Bryce could follow him, is probably parked there too, so he spins on his heel, goes right back to the locker room, because he has a feeling Bryce won’t follow him there. Obviously he can’t be seen talking to a random teenager. People might _assume_.

He’s right.

It feels like shit to be right.


End file.
